BALANCING EXPOSURES

Even though your Nikon is capable of capturing a wide range of brightness, you’ll need to give it some help to maintain detail in both the sky and the landscape at sunrise and sunset. If you are shooting JPEGs, then you can use Nikon’s D-Lighting tech that optimizes high-contrast images, while in extremely high-contrast conditions you can also use the HDR (high dynamic range) mode available on many Nikons. But these systems don’t always give the most natural-looking results, so you may want to consider other options.

Filters

Using ND grad filters is a great way to capture detail in both the sky and the land in your sunrise and sunset shots. A 0.6 (2 stop) grad is perfect for most sunsets, but a stronger 0.9 (3 stop) can be needed if you are shooting more directly into the sun.

If the sun is very low in the sky, so that the brightest area of the sky is close to the horizon, you can use a ‘reverse’ ND grad. These are similar to normal ND grads, but they are darkest towards the central, transition area of the filter, and lighter towards the top.

Software techniques

Shooting in Raw allows your Nikon to capture a little more detail in the highlights and shadows than JPEG, so you have the option of using the Graduated Filter and Adjustment Brush features of Lightroom and Camera Raw to recover detail in your sunset or sunrise shots. Alternatively, by shooting two or more frames, and changing the exposure to capture detail in the brightest highlights and darkest shadows, you have the option of combining them to get a more balanced result. You can use the HDR feature in either Lightroom or Photoshop, or manually combine frames for the sky and land using layer masks in Photoshop.